Going to Meet the Man

A major collection of short fiction—including the story “Sonny’s Blues"—by one of America’s most important writers, exploring the wounds racism leaves in both its victims and its perpetrators.

In this modern classic, “there’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it.” The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their head above water.

It may be the heroin that a down-and-out jazz pianist uses to face the terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. It may be the brittle piety of a father who can never forgive his son for his illegitimacy. Or it may be the screen of bigotry that a redneck deputy has raised to blunt the awful childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a black man being murdered by a gleeful mob.

By turns haunting, heartbreaking, and horrifying, Going to Meet the Man is a major work by one of the most important writers of the twentieth century.

Including:

The Rockpile

The Outing

The Man Child

Previous Condition

Sonny’s Blues

This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

Come Out the Wilderness

Going to Meet the Man